Elijah Phillips' perception of poetry and the 1908 Springfield Race Riot had already evolved by Day 3 of a special weeklong workshop that ended Friday for Springfield Urban League students.

“I thought it was going to be dumb and boring, but it actually has been pretty fun,” said Phillips, a 15-year-old soon-to-be sophomore at Springfield High School.

“We got to learn things about other people and what they think. It's actually kind of cool.”

For the first time this summer, 45 students enrolled in Springfield Urban League's Camp Nkiru took part in a weeklong “docu-poetry” workshop sponsored by Benedictine University at Springfield.

Camp Nkiru is a three-week summer program sponsored by the Urban League that offers social and recreational activities for students in grades 6 to 12.

Amy Sayre Baptista, a Benedictine humanities instructor who is teaching the class, said docu-poetry stands for the “poetry of witness” and involves combining primary source material with poetry writing.

She said students in the program were being exposed to historical documents detailing the 1908 Springfield Race Riot, among other things, and then turning those works into individual and communal poetry.

The two-day race riot — which led to creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — was a massive civil disturbance resulting in the deaths of at least seven people after an angry white mob sought unsuccessfully to lynch two black inmates in the county jail and then turned on black businesses and homes.

Each day, the students write a poem about what they learned and perform it in front of the class.

On Wednesday, Sayre Baptista played “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday and handed out the lyrics to the students to discuss afterward.

The song, written by teacher Abel Meeropo in 1937 and later performed by Holiday, protested racism, particularly the lynching of African-Americans in the South.

It's the type of experience that Sayre Baptista says many of the students wouldn't be exposed to if it weren't for the partnership.

“They're not being taught this in school,” Sayre Baptista said. “To be able to provide kids with a voice and way to understand the history of their community is really something special.”

Danyel Pitts, Springfield Urban League school age youth programming director, said the docu-poetry workshop concept fits into the college- and career-readiness focus the Urban League has for its students.

One of the challenges for the organization is keeping students focused on learning during the summer.

But more importantly, Pitts said, summer programming is instrumental in providing structure to the students, who often come from low-income families.